


You Were, Once

by Dashboardjuliet



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: F/M, M/M, Phantom of the Opera AU, liberal use of terrible french forgive me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:41:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashboardjuliet/pseuds/Dashboardjuliet
Summary: When Nahri, the forgotten daughter of prima donna Manizheh, starts to take vocal lessons from an unknown tutor, the world of the Paris Opera House will be turned on its head.
Relationships: Darayavahoush e-Afsin/Nahri e-Nahid, Jamshid e-Pramukh/Muntadhir al Qahtani
Kudos: 6





	1. Angel of Music

**Author's Note:**

> THE PHANTOM AU NO ONE ASKED FOR
> 
> Welcome to my cave, I make no promises about how often this will be updated but for now I'm on a roll.

Her earliest memories are of watching the corps pirouette and plié across the practice room in the back of the theater. She had been born there, or so she’d been told, that her mother had pushed her right out in her private room, screaming and all before putting a calm face back on and moving along with her life like the birth had never happened. So she’s been told. The memory doesn’t surface, but it sounds right; Nahri knows her mother, knows her bizarre obsession with the stage and how much it means to her. Much more than Nahri. 

To be honest with herself, she prefers it that way. Because yes, even if her mother doesn’t pay much attention to her, she still knows her. The theater is her, an extension of her body and psyche, and her mother stomps around the place without a care. Everyone is quite open with how they feel about Manizheh behind her back: she’s a bitch, a talentless hack that only happens to hit the high notes that everyone loves, cruel. And they’re right. Her mother is all of those things. It feels worse for her, though, because at least her mother pays attention to those people, even if it’s to yell at them. At least she’s aware they exist… or acts like it. Nahri, for all her mother seemed to act, was a ghost that only deserved a spare upturned eyebrow when her name was brought in front of her.

But she’s fine with it. When she was younger, it was harder to understand why her mother wouldn’t pay attention to her. But as a young woman, eighteen with no proper education except the theater and what the instructors were willing to pass on to her as the ‘shadow’ of the theater, Nahri is perfectly content with her mother having never been a true part of her life. She’s fine. She has a perfectly respectable place in the corps, which provides her with all the companionship and attention that she needs. She enjoys dancing on stage with her friends, drinking backstage with them, avoiding the ever watching gaze of Madame Nisreen. She avoids her mother, avoids Ghassan, her mother’s counterpart whom she hates, avoids Monsieurs Kaveh and Wajed who run the theater and don’t have time for les petits rats getting in their way. Nahri is content to sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by, getting on stage only when she needs to, then returning to a life she’s content with.

It seems, as she places her hand over her heart to keep count of the steady beating underneath her fingertips, that she has always been content, and that is always how she has operated. The snores and quiet sighes of her friends around her fill the air. The dormitory where the corps sleep is less of a dormitory and more of a large room stacked full with as many double beds as it can fit. Next to her, Zaynab is tucked tightly into her blankets; Nahri can see her clearly, the window above them providing enough light from the moon and the unfortunately placed street lamp outside. Down the room behind a curtain that’s been strung up to provide some semblance of privacy, she knows the boys slumber: Jamshid and Ali, and another newly recruited child that’s joined them, one that Nahri hasn’t learned the name of yet.

And she knows, as she gently pulls her covers down her body to tuck them under her feet, and as she swings her legs off the wire bed frame that only slightly creaks as she moves, that they will not wake up. All of them sleep like the summer when it falls in Paris: heavy, and unmovable. She stands, tiptoes on feet that she knows will not make a sound, and exists the room they all share. The hallways of the theater open up to her once she leaves the room: if she were to turn right, follow the stairs upward to the third landing and then take another right, she would end up near costuming and her mother’s rooms. If she doesn’t take the stairs, she’ll end up at the practice rooms and storage, stock of props stacked up to the ceiling. But she doesn’t go right, she goes left. 

Left leads down. Down past the level the orchestra pit is on, where the exit to the stables are, past even where the large props are stored (the huge elephant, she thinks, from their production of  _ Hannibal _ that they are setting up to perform in two months). Her goal is deeper, and so she walks down two more flights of stairs, keeps her hand against the wall that gets colder and colder the further down she goes. The stairs eventually end, and she takes the next left, coming to the small alcove opening that serves as a sanctuary of worship for the theater. The Opera House was its own contained city, and every good city must have a chapel.

Someone, unknown to her, had painted the figure of the Virgin Mary on the wall behind the altar where the votive candles sat unlit. She was nothing special, Nahri thought, but she did admire the way the strokes of paint seemed more steady paying attention to the smaller details, like her eyes. The whole thing was cracking, paint peeling away to show the bare wall underneath it, the moist air of the bowls of the house having done the painting no good. The altar, for the most part, is abandoned. Hardly anyone comes down this far, which makes it the perfect place for Nahri to escape to. She is in no way religious, having never been raised in any tradition, but she lights a candle regardless, striking the supplied matches against the altar and bringing the flame to the tip of one of the tall candles, watching closely as the flame danced and jumped from the match to the already burned wick. Waving the match out, she keeps her eyes glued to the wavering candle, and the small glow that it casts, as she leans back into the alcoves only seat, a spot where the wall concaves in, providing a small shelf to rest on.

Her nightgown is thin, and the threadbare shawl that she’s wrapped around her shoulders does little to combat the cold but she doesn’t mind much, almost enjoying the way her skin pebbles in the cool, because it reminds her that she can feel more than just content. So she sits, back pressed up against the cold wall, knees pull up to her chest and hands tucked into her armpits. And there, surrounded by silence save for the dripping of water from some exposed pipe, Nahri begins to sing.

The voice that comes out of her is not her mothers. Her mother is lucky to have the voice she has, but Nahri knows, just like everyone else in the theater knows, that her mother has to practice for weeks to get her notes just right. Singing does not come naturally to her mother, and it is easily seen to everyone that spends more than one night with her. Crowds love her, the soaring notes that she can seemingly hit without end, but she’s been doing it too long. There’s a roughness to her voice, a usage that the maestro can detect but chooses to overlook for the sake of the draw that her name brings.

Her voice comes in at the opposite end of the spectrum from where her mother sits, or so Ali has told her. She can’t exactly trust her best friend, but when she plugs one ear to listen as she begins her scales, she thinks he might have been being honest. She’s quiet and breathy, but the lyric quality that had once propelled her mother to fame is there, vibrato warbling the perfect amount as she begins to sing the first lines of the aria from  _ Hannibal,  _ the words repeating in her mother’s voice in her head.

“ _ Think of me” _

_ “ Think of me fondly”  _

_ “When we've said goodbye,” _

She doesn’t continue, lets the high note of ‘goodbye’ echo in the air, reverberating off the empty walls. It lingers for a moment, makes the space feel small, but then it’s gone, and then it’s just Nahri and the steady dripping again.

“You need more control, in your chest. And you’re not singing far enough back. Instead of having your voice forward, imagine it pulled back in your throat.” A voice calls out. Nahri freezes, hands coming out from her armpits to plant against the wall, cementing her as she peered over her shoulder to the doorway. Which was empty.

“Come out right now,” She’s amazed that her voice manages to be so firm despite the way her heart is racing. “You nearly scared God himself out of me, and trust me there isn’t much of Him to begin with.” There’s a chuckle, deep and throaty, in response to her demand, but no figure appears, so she stands on unsteady feet and walks to the doorway to peer around the corner, only to be met with open space. She tries to control the way her heart speeds up again.

“I’m afraid you won’t be seeing me tonight, but come back in here and sing that line again.”

“Who are you? Your voice doesn’t sound familiar.” She ignores the request, choosing to stand with her arms crossed over her chest in the doorway.

“Do you know everyone in the Palais Garnier? Sing, before I decide to be bored with this.”

“I like to think that I do considering the amount of time I’ve been here. And I don’t ever recall hearing your voice.” She doesn’t add ‘ _ because I would certainly remember a voice like yours, deep and warm and, I assume, would be sweet on my tongue like caramel.’ _ He doesn’t respond right away, but when he does, it is with a chuckle, again.

“Ah, you’re Prima Manizheh’s daughter aren’t you? I should have known from the way you position yourself. You hold your shoulders inwards like your mother does when she’s not reminded about it, which is far too often for my taste.” She bristles at being identified as her mother’s daughter, but has to stifle the laughter that threatens to come out of her mouth when he seems to identify the prima.

“You are not incorrect, monsieur. But I think now that you know me, I should know you too.”

“You will, eventually, I think. You’ve caught my interest. Now sing, please,  mon petite prima .”

Nahri doesn’t like to be commanded, likes to think of herself as her own master, especially having been given free command of her life as soon as she had been deemed able to, but the way he calls her his little prima makes her shiver, and swallowing her nerves, she sings again. This time, she listens to him, remembers how he told her to pull her voice backwards, pulls her shoulders out, expands her diaphragm to breathe like she remembers her mother being reminded of it.

She sings, and the difference is already noticeable, even to her unplugged ear. There is more air in her notes, but it’s controlled, and even if it still sounds weak in her chest, the way the voice sighs tells her that it isn’t.

As the final note rings out through the air, and she takes a deep breath, there is clapping.

“Brava, mon petite prima. You have a voice that rivals your mother. Dare I say, with a bit more teaching, even better. Will you let me?”

“Let you what?” 

“Teach you.”

“Will all our lessons be done like this, me singing to a faceless specter?” His chuckle rings out again, and this time she doesn’t stop the smirk from crawling across her face at the sound of it.

“Perhaps, but you’ll have to say yes to find out, won’t you?”

“Well I suppose I have no other option, do I, because I think you’ve caught my interest too. So the answer’s yes, whoever you are.”

For a moment, there’s no response, and for that moment Nahri has a distinct voice in her head telling her to leave, to turn and flee up the stairs back to the dormitory and forget that all of this happened. But she doesn’t. She stays, keeps her bare feet planted on the cold floor, waiting for his voice to return.

“Come down here every night then, around the same time. We begin your lessons tomorrow.” It’s a dismissal if she’s ever heard one, and so she swallows the many questions that she has and turns to leave the sanctuary.

“My name… well, you may call me the Angel of Music.” Against her better nature, she snorts.

“I absolutely refuse to call you that, but we can work on it. For now, goodnight Monsieur.”

“Goodnight, Nahri.”

It is only when she's on the second flight of stairs back to the dormitory that she realizes: she never gave him her name.

  
  



	2. Interim I

He stays sitting there for hours after she’s gone, but the way he feels doesn’t change. He feels  _ alive _ . It’s an odd feeling, being  _ alive, _ but he thinks he could get used to it. The pathway that he’s hidden in isn’t large, he’s already having to bend down to fit in it, but he can’t find the strength to move out of it, to go about his original plans before he heard  _ her.  _ So he sits, pants getting wet in the water that pools in the concrete beneath him, and struggling, he tears out the high collar he’s wearing, the buttons of his shirt popping as he pulls the cotton fabric apart so he can get to what he’s seeking. Fingers probe under the undershirt to his bare skin and there, resting his fingertips so lightly against the skin of his chest, he can feel his heart  _ beating. _

His head falls back against the wall behind him at the revelation.

He can’t remember the last time his heart has beat on its own. It’s been silent for ages, for so long that the feeling of it moving underneath his hand feels alien, strange inside his own body. 

He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like how his body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him, but even that thought makes him pause, because thinking about the possession of himself leads him down a path that he doesn’t particularly like to think about. 

He’s belonged to the theater for so long. Or the theater belongs to him. The line between the two crossed a long time ago, and if he’s honest with himself, he hasn’t belonged to his own self in a long time.

But in that moment, sitting there in the darkness, surrounded by the lingering memory of her song, Dara feels like he is fully himself. 

He is _alive,_ and he needs to hear her sing again.

  
  



End file.
